When the first Burning Man event took place on San Francisco's Baker Beach in 1986, it was such a lawless free-for-all that when it came time to burn The Man, a woman ran toward the engulfed 20-foot-tall humanoid structure and held its hand while wind blew the flames away from her.

Twenty-five years later, the annual event has become a mass sojourn into the Nevada Black Rock desert - one that some of its most loyal followers complain is becoming increasingly rigid and commercial.

And now it has come to this: For the first time ever, Burning Man has literally sold out.

Organizers were forced to cap the number of attendees to the weeklong event, an art-focused, community-centric festival that starts Aug. 29. The event sold out last week, giving rise to a profitable black market that some past Burning Man participants say goes against the festival's principles.

The cap on ticket sales was necessary to limit attendance as required by the permit issued by the federal Bureau of Land Management. That permit allows for 50,000 people at any one time, organizers said, and more than 51,500 tickets were sold last year.

Burning Man has been gradually increasing attendance ever since the first event was held to celebrate radical self-expression, inclusion and communal well-being. It started on Baker Beach, but after the National Park Service police prohibited burning the structure in 1990, organizers moved to the Black Rock Desert. Attendance has increased by a few thousand each year, but never before sold out.

The cap on tickets has hundreds of people, some who already asked for time off of work, booked flights and rented RVs, logging onto sites like Craigslist, eBay and StubHub in search of tickets.

People on eBay have bid more than $1,500 for a single ticket - more than four times the highest retail priced ticket at $360. StubHub is selling tickets from $1,270 to $250,000.

That profit-seeking spirit is quite the departure from the money-free economy that operates on the Burning Man playa, where the community thrives on gifting and communal welfare and the only allowed commercial transactions are for ice and coffee.

Some past Burning Man participants who were not able to secure tickets are now flagging sellers and buyers on Craigslist who are willing to make above-retail value offers.

Ninad Ghody, who has attended the festival six times, didn't buy a ticket in time this year. The San Francisco resident co-founded the Universal Babel Project, a service introduced to Burning Man last year where people can dictate letters to project members with typewriters and then pick out stamps from the project's time-spanning collection. He said he's been flagging Craigslist posts selling tickets for above face value in hopes of getting the posts removed.

He predicted that next year, scalpers will snatch up the early-release tickets that are offered for lower prices.

This week, Ghody found a ticket for face value but still needs one for his friend Arthur Grau, the other founder of the mailing project.

Some Burning Man devotees have tried to fight profiteering scalpers by submitting fake bids of up to $10,000 or more on eBay, said five-year festival participant Sam Gipson of Los Angeles.

Gipson and his friend David Neuman operate the Black Rock Bijou, a 22-person movie theater modeled after one in the 1971 movie "The Last Picture Show."

The pair is looking for two tickets for members of their seven-person theater crew but balked at the high cost and what it means for the event.

There is a theory that Burning Man is not sustainable if more and more people come to it, Neuman said.

"You can't have it both ways. You can't say we're radically inclusive and then say we will only have 52,000 tickets," he said.

Andie Grace, spokeswoman for Burning Man organizer Black Rock City LLC, said warnings were sent through Burning Man's e-mail lists as ticket sales soared. Past attendees, artists and musicians were given ample time to purchase tickets before the sellout, Grace said.

A new permit is being negotiated, Grace said, but a temporary one using the same stipulations as the 2006-10 permit is being used until an environmental assessment is completed.

The amount of people Black Rock City LLC can allow in is dictated by its permit with the federal Bureau of Land Management, who manages the Black Rock Desert. The 2011 permit puts that number at a maximum of 50,000 per day. More than 51,500 tickets were sold for last year's event without breaching the terms of the permit because not everyone attends for the entire week, Grace said.

She wouldn't say how many tickets were sold for this year's event.

Black Rock City LLC is proposing a permit for 2012-16 that would allow 50,000 people the first year and increase that number by 6 percent until reaching 70,000 when the permit terminates, said Bureau of Land Management spokeswoman Lisa Ross.

However, Chicken John Rinaldi, longtime Burning Man participant and a San Francisco performance artist who ran for mayor in 2007, said a conversation needs to take place about limiting the number of people gathering in the desert.

He said he wants to remove Black Rock City LLC leadership from unilaterally making the decision and would prefer that the Burning Man community come together to write a constitution, vote for representation and decide who can come and who cannot.

"What's bad is when one or two people make a decision for an entire culture," Rinaldi said. "There are some pretty effective and amazing people at your disposal, and you'll find them if you keep asking me for phone numbers."